Donald Martin Jenni (born Milwaukee, October 4, 1937 – died New Orleans June 21, 2006) was an American composer, musicologist, and educator.
Most of all, his ability to subject even the most seemingly obvious musical materials to a laser-like microscopic analysis was miraculous.
[6] Jenni "had knowledge of a dozen" languages, and was fluent in many of them, including French, German, Swiss, Danish, Slovak, and Hungarian.
[8] In 1996, Jenni became a claustral oblate of the Benedictine monastery of Christ in the Desert in Chama, New Mexico, and the legal guardian of a boy from Gambia whom he had sponsored through the Christian Children's Fund.
In 1999, when his foster son completed high school and enrolled in college, Jenni retired from Iowa and moved to Chama to become the monastery's choirmaster.